Beep... bee boop... Beep... bee boop... "Dad, you're so old!"

When our baby is old enough to play video games (if she wants to) they are going to be so much more advanced than the stuff that I played when I was younger. Last year for my birthday, Alison got me a Wii and I have downloaded a few of the older NES games on it. I recently got MegaMan which was a huge hit for me back in the day. I play it now and it looks horrible... its fun still (although really frustrating), but it looks pretty bad. I am sure that when she is old enough, she will surely ridicule the lack of motion sensing and thought reading controls lacking from the games her 'old man' used to play. Who knows, maybe I will still be up on those things when it comes to that time. I think it's much different now than it was when I was growing up. The parents to my generation didn't have video games growing up so they had no idea what was going on and kind of started in a hole. Maybe when I am 60 I can play some Playstation 9 with my grand kids, I might even let them win once in a while ;)

Have baby, will travel... well at least attempt to...

Our baby was at her second wedding this past weekend. Our good friends Gary and Samantha got married down in Florida and Alison and I were both in the wedding party. It was really great to get down there and visit with everyone for a little while. It will be much harder at first for us to travel after we have our little baby. I have been thinking about traveling after we have the baby and I know it is going to be much harder. Not only will we probably stop every 45 minutes, but we will also be listening to every Disney song imaginable (probably the same one repeating if I am lucky :-\ ). I am thinking that we are going to have to get one of those trailer hitch shelves to pile stuff on when we travel... either that or one of the pods for the top of the Murano {shudder}. I know that our first test in traveling will be trying to get down to Florida shortly after the baby is born to meet everyone that isn't able to come up and visit... should be fun. {crosses fingers} :) As hard as it will be, I am looking forward to being able to travel with my daughter. I remember the countless road trips when I was growing up and I actually had a good time on them. It was always fun to go to new places and get my seating area all set up for the trip, I hope she has some good experiences with the family trips as well. Even though the traveling will be hard, there are two words that make all of the "Are we there yet?" comments, bathroom stops 5 mins after getting gas etc worth while... Disney World.

Nothing spells baby like G-R-A-C-O

We are having a baby. As if the multiple positive pregnancy tests, the first ultra sound, setting up the room, getting the crib, and the first time feeling her kick were not proof enough we got one more slap in the face "You are having a baby" moment today. Alison's Aunt Ginger and Uncle Ron got us the stroller and infant seat for the shower. I opened the box up and put it all together and then I looked at it for a min. There is no turning back now, we are definitely having a baby and now we have a rolling billboard for it :).

Another thing I learned so far this week is that babies produce a lot of garbage... before they are even born. We have a box for the crib and all the packing materials, a box for the dresser, box for the light, box for the stroller... I don't think we had this much cardboard to recycle since we moved.

Everything is coming together now. It's almost kind of surreal. We have spent the last few months thinking of all these things that we had to do before the baby got here (at least I was) and now they are actually getting done. It's a nice "you can do this" kind of confidence boost. I know that confidence boost will go out the window as I am driving Alison to the hospital in the middle of the night with my pants on backwards... but at least it will keep me from staying up all night worrying about it (I hope).

This week on Cribs...

Alison's parents got us the crib for the baby's room and we picked it up the other day. We just got it put together and it looks really nice in the room. It definitely looks like a baby's room now. We also have the dresser that Bobbie and Grandpa Jeff & Eileen got us... it's in the garage for now until I can get some help bringing it upstairs. I will get a picture of that once it's up there.

a great ride...

One of my friends had a birthday the other day, I sent him an email saying Happy Birthday and asked how things were going etc. He knew about our baby on the way and in his reply he said something that was another eye opener / reality check for me...

...after hearing my little one sing Happy Birthday, I know I never had it so good. You are in for a great ride.

I have been thinking about how much I love my baby and all these things I will do for her and take care of her etc, but I haven't really thought about stuff like that. I mean, how great will it be to have a little toddler run up to me when I come home? My birthday is coming up in a few weeks and it will be the last one without my daughter. For my next birthday I will have a 9+ month old. That will be the best gift yet. I am looking forward to all of those little smiles and hugs from my daughter. Things are going to change... a lot and I am going to completely welcome it.

Is it too early to pick our a Halloween Costume for our Baby... for next year?

I try to imagine how different everything will be once our baby gets here and as much as I prepare myself, I know it is going to blow me away. It's almost like I am boarding up the windows to a tent and there is a Category 5 Baby headed directly at me. Alison and I were talking about holidays the other day. This will be our last Thanksgiving and Christmas with out a child. We started going through the holidays and thinking how old our daughter will be at 4th of July and what we can dress her up for at Halloween and how old she will be at her first Christmas. Last year was the first Christmas in our own home which was really exciting... next Christmas we will have a little girl that is almost 1 year old. I think Halloween will be a lot of fun. The little kids costumes are always really cute. It's scary, I can remember when I used to get excited for Halloween to dress up and go out Trick or Treating and now I am talking about dressing up my own child. I feel like I am getting old, but at the same time I think having a baby will also make me feel young too. I think having the baby will change our holidays in a good way. It will be fun to get to play with my daughter and let her keep me young. I hope that our baby will grow up liking Duplo and Legos. Playing with that kind of stuff never gets old, it just becomes socially unacceptable to keep playing with them. That's probably one of the reasons people have kids, so they can play with toys again :).

Lights (chandelier), camera (took a picture), action (I put it up)

I just finished putting up the light in the baby's room. It looks really nice, I can't wait to see it tonight with the dimmer. It hangs a little low so I will bump my head on it if I walk in the middle of the room, but I think it will work out fine. I will probably be so sleep deprived I won't even realize that I hit my head on it.

She shoots, she scores.... GOAL!!!

I felt our baby kick the other day for the first time. I had my hand on Alison's stomach not really expecting to be able to feel anything and then all of a sudden I felt a little tap on my hand. Alison said that my eye's got really wide and I just said "Woah!" It is safe to say that I was completely taken off guard and didn't expect that to happen. She is now about 11 inches long from head to toe and she weighs about a pound. I think that it will be weird when we will be able to see her move from side to side.

Alison and I went out to lunch today at some restaurant that made salads and grilled sandwiches etc. It was right next to Babies R Us so we decided to go in and take a look around. We were walking by a clearance table and I saw a really cute chandelier for the baby's room. I had remembered seeing it online and the reviews said that it was misleading in the pictures since it was actually yellow with sprays of white instead of all white. It gave it a textured look. We ended up getting it since it was a really good deal and I just got a can of white spray paint and now its hanging in the garage drying, just waiting to go up into her room. The picture here is what it looked like on the website (it looked more yellow than that picture, but now it will be completely white). I will be sure to post a picture when I have the light up in the room.

Baby's Room.... TADA!!!

Here is a picture of the baby's room. The colors don't show up quite right on the camera, but you can get the overall idea. The difference in this room is drastic. Before it was dark blue walls with a faux finish... now its light greens and white with woodwork. I am happy with the way it came together. It seemed to take forever, but I think it was worth it. I know our daughter will not notice it when she first gets here, but I hope she will have some good memories of this room when she gets older.

Ok, room is done...only took two tries.

Well, in my last post I said that we had painted the room Tinkerbell green and Pooh's Corner on the ceiling... well, things change. We decided that the colors were a little too bright, so we toned it down a bit and went with Christopher Robin's Swing on the walls and Skipping Stones on the ceiling (the room isn't Winnie the Pooh themed, just like the colors :) ). We used the Behr Disney colors again. They all seem to go well together and its pretty easy to pick out the colors that match. The colors we picked are a pair of pastel greens. I think it looks really nice for a baby girls room. The crown molding and chair rail is up and painted, blinds, new outlets, switches, dimmer, new door knobs/hinges... yea its been a busy weekend. The only thing left to do in the room (construction/renovating-wise) is putting up a light. We saw a really nice light at Pottery Barn, but we haven't picked it up yet. My crazy expectant father list is getting shorter... I guess I should start adding more things on to it. ;)

Something else happened this weekend, we decided on the name for our beautiful baby girl. It is ________. (Not going to tell you that easily ;) ). It is nice knowing the name of the baby for sure. It makes it even more real. The other night, after Alison had fallen asleep, I had a talk with my daughter... it was nice being able to say her name. I am looking forward to meeting her.